Army of Crime

The Sunday Times
October 4, 2009

Edward Porter

Robert Guédiguian, a French Ken Loach, has sought a fresh angle on his
country’s wartime resistance movement by focusing on Missak Manouchian,
a French-Armenian communist who led a diverse group of young Resistance
fighters, including Poles, Hungarians and Romanians. Plainly meant as a
corrective to present-day anti-immigrant politics, the film has
Manouchian (Simon Abkarian) and his wife (Virginie Ledoyen) at its
centre, but also tells of several other members of the group. Few of
these individuals are fleshed out enough to give their stories much
emotional power, so the film, in a sense, has too many subplots. Then
again, that broad scope helps Guédiguian to paint a credible, detailed
picture of day-to-day life in occupied France: an attraction in itself.

15, 139 mins